Noting that "no major breakthrough" was possible at the climate change conference in Cancun, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said that the focus of the international community had now shifted to what measures needed to be taken "post-Cancun".
The minister, who initiated the discussion at the Major Economies Forum in New York yesterday, pointed out that the discussion at MEF had revolved around discussing what would be the likely outcomes at Cancun, Mexico.
"Clearly now the focus is on post-Cancun. We recognise that there is no breakthrough possible in Cancun but let's now try to cut our losses and see what we can do after Cancun," Ramesh told PTI.
"So we get a set of COP (Conference of Parties) decisions at Cancun and let those decisions serve as a further basis of further action post-Cancun," he said, after the MEF meeting.
The countries present in the two-day MEF meeting are Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, and the United States.
Countries that come to the conference in Cancun, later this year, are expected to produce a legally binding treaty to combat climate change, which the conference in Copenhagen failed to do.
Instead, two-weeks of negotiations yielded the non-binding Copenhagen Accord, which was produced by 29 countries, but principally drafted by the United States, China, India, Brazil and South Africa, in the last few hours of the Conference.
It was criticised by certain countries including Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba for having left the majority of the nations out of the negotiating process, and led to charges of a "trust deficit" between the developed and developing world.
Key elements of the Accord included a limit 2 degree rise of global temperature, $100 billion on finance in long term finance to developing countries and $30 billion to short-term finance to the poorest and most vulnerable countries.
The minister reiterated that one of the reasons for the lack of progress in Cancun is the absence of any action towards dispensing of $30 billion by developed countries promised at Copenhagen.
India and other emerging economies do not benefit from this aid. "We should be realistic of what you can expect to do in Cancun," Ramesh said.
"In the absence of any forward movement on the fast start finance issue to expect some major breakthroughs at Cancun is unrealistic."
"We have areas where there are substantial bodies of agreement like in area of forestry technology cooperation for adaptation that we can take forward, but all this depends on how quickly the fast start finance gets dispersed for Africa, for the Small Island States and the LDCs (Least Developed Countries)," he continued.
There is still no mechanism in place for the distribution of the money. This is a problem being addressed by the Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing, set up by UN.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, which is looking at both procuring and channelling billions of dollars. The second meeting of the Advisory Group at the UN headquarters, last month, concluded that climate financing still faced many practical challenges.
The group is expected to give its recommendations before governments gather at Cancun.
